ancient world fetched it from Prussia. On
the coast of Prussia the greater part of it is
still found, either by seeking it in mines, or
by collecting it when thrown upon the shore
after autumnal storms. The use of amber
for a mouthpiece was probably suggested by
an opinion, current now in Turkey, that this
substance will not transmit infection, and as
it is there a point of courtesy to offer the pipe
to a stranger, amber mouth-pieces are of
course in general request.

About cigars it will be worth while to record
a fact or two, that we have found stated in the
lectures upon the results of the Great Exhition.
The best Havannah tobacco grows only
in one part of Cuba, over a very small surface
of soil. Very little of this comes to England;
it is used at home or sent abroad in presents.
Other Havannah tobacco is not better than
tobacco grown in Trinidad, or than the best
American tobacco, or than tobacco grown in
southern provinces of Russia. The superiority
of most Havannah cigars consists only in the
care and skill with which they have been
manufactured, but cigars can be made and
are made in London as good as most, and
much better than many of the cigars imported
from Havannah, paying a ten shilling duty.
That duty is saved by manufacturing in
England. In the German Commercial Union six
hundred and five million of cigars were made
in the year 1842, much inferior in quality to
those of English manufacture. The conversion
of tobacco into these popular cloud-compellers
is a matter of hand labour, and would employ
in this country a very large number of hands,
if the good quality of English made cigars
were justly recognized.

Two hundred years ago, snuff-taking was
common among all classes in Ireland. It
mightily refreshed the brain, and was taken
out of his box even by the ploughman resting
from his work, and drawn into the nostril
with a quill. The early snuff-takers did not
sniff snuff by pinches. The Scotch calling
their powder of tobacco not after the mode
of taking it, but after the effect it produced,
named it sneeshin," and spoke of the boxes
in which it was kept as sneeshin-mills. This
name of mill or mull was given to the box,
because the snuff-taker in those days toasted
his own tobacco leaves before the fire, and
then putting them into his box, made with a
view to such use in the form of a cone or
cylinder, there ground it into powder with a
piece of wood. A ram's horn was a convenient
mill, and a sneeshin horn of that kind,
with a spoon and hare's foot attached to it by
chains, has been for a long time regarded in
England as the true Scotch Mull. We will
say nothing of the snuff-boxes in gold and
jewels, amber and glass, and the admirable
Scotch snuff-box of the present day, with
perfect hinge and closely fitting cover, out of
which pinches are taken that defile the
fingers and insult the nose. Few are the men
now among us who can take strong beer for
breakfast, and inhale snuff by the spoonful.
But what can we expect in these degenerate
days!

             POWDER DICK AND HIS TRAIN.

THE Surrey shore of the Thames at
London is dotted with damp houses of
entertainment. The water-side public-house,
though, perchance, hard by an archiepiscopal
residence, and over against a legislative palace,
is essentially watersidey. Mud is before,
behind, around, about it: mud that in wet
weather surges against its basement in
peasoup-like gushes, and that in summer cakes
into hard parallelograms of dirt, which, pulverised
by the feet of customers, fly upwards
in throat-choking dust. The foundations
of the water-side public-house are piles of
timbers, passably rotten; timbers likewise
shore up no inconsiderable portion of its
frontage. It is a very damp house. The
garrets are as dank and oozy as cellars, and
the cellars are like—what?—well: mermaids'
caves. The pewter pots and counters are
never bright; the pipe splints light with a
fizzy sluggish sputter; an unwholesome ooze
hangs on the wall; the japanned tea-trays are
covered with a damp rime; the scanty vegetation
in the back-garden resembles sea-weed;
the ricketty summer-house is like the wreck
of a caboose. The landlord wears a
low-crowned glazed hat, and the pot-boy a
checked shirt; the very halfpence he gives
you for change are damp, so is the
tobacco, so are the leaves of last Saturday's
Shipping and Mercantile Gazette. They
don't wash the water-side public-house much,
but let it fester and ooze and slime away as
it lists; neither do they attempt to clear
away the muddy sort of moat surrounding it;
although, for the convenience of customers
wishing to preserve clean boots, there is a
species of bridge or pontoon leading from the
road to the public door, formed of rotten
deck planks, and stair-rails. One side of the
door is guarded by a mop as ragged and as
tangled as the unkempt head of Peter the
wild boy; the other by a damp dog, looking
as if he had been in the water too long, had
not been properly dried when he came out,
and had so got chapped and mangy.

Rollocks is the landlord of the waterside
public-house, the Tom Tug's Head. Rollocks
was a jolly young waterman once, and used
for to ply at Blackfriars and elsewhere in the
days when the waters of the Thames were
ruffled by oars feathered with skill and
dexterity; and not by the paddle-wheels of the
Citizen and Waterman steamboats. Rollocks
won Doggett's Coat and Badge twenty years
ago. Afterwards, when by the introduction
of steam-vessels aquatics had become more a
sport than an avocation, Rollocks won many
hard contested matches. He beat Sammon
the Newcastle coaley, by three lengths, and
was subsequently matched to row Jibb, the